Bad winter in New England leads to potholes

$3.1 M has been spent through March alone

kabc

By ABC7

PORTLAND, Maine Oil poured out of the punctured oil pan, the engine froze up and
the car sputtered to a halt in Lincolnville, a small town near the
coast. Their insurance company wrote the car off as a total loss.

Potholes are an annual rite of spring in New England, but this
monster winter of record snowfall amounts - nearly 200 inches in
places - has turned roads into monster problems.

"The road had cracks and holes and heaves all over it," said
Juanita Smith, recounting the mid-March incident. "It looked like
an earthquake had opened up the road."

New Englanders know all too well what spring can bring as roads
swell up and break apart when water seeps into pavement cracks and
freezes and thaws while the road is being pounded under the heavy
weight of vehicles.

Maine's state Department of Transportation faces record pothole
repair bills. Through March, it had spent $3.1 million, just shy of
the record $3.2 million spent in the winter of 2005-2006.

"We've had a dozen calls from different regions of the state
all proclaiming their road as the worst," said spokesman Mark
Latti. "The worst road is generally the one you drive on a regular
basis. The reality is it's been a record-breaking year - both for
snowfall and also for potholes."

The potholes are the worst that Martin Krauter, the acting town
manager in the western Maine town of Fryeburg, has seen in his 25
years in municipal government across Maine.

Drivers have to slow down to a crawl and swerve this way and
that to avoid the holes - or risk knocking their vehicles out of
alignment or losing mufflers.

A few weeks ago, Krauter said, four cars blew out tires within
minutes of each other on one particularly bad pothole.

One night in Jericho, Vt., employees at a country store counted
a dozen cars limping into the parking lot with popped tires - some
had two blown tires - caused by a pothole described as 3 feet wide
and a foot deep.

In Massachusetts, problems started showing up earlier than
usual, said state Highway Department spokesman Adam Hurtubise.

"The earlier temperature extremes this year got pothole season
started earlier this year," he said. "Earlier tends to mean a
little bit more."

All this comes at a time when municipal and state budgets
already are stretched by tight revenues in the slowing economy and
the high cost of removing all that snow from roads.

Plus, the cost of pothole patching has gone up with the rising
price of petroleum-based tar.

Roads got so bad this winter in Lincolnville, where the Smiths'
VW died, that residents submitted a petition asking selectmen to
not submit money owed to the state until the Department of
Transportation fixed the problems.

At Century Tire in Portland, assistant manager Ricky Chambers
said bent wheels and blown tires are part of the price of living in
New England.

"But I'd rather deal with the potholes than with the
hurricanes," he said.